Japan’s Favourite Snack Feels the Inflation Crunch

Global inflation has hit Japan’s favourite crunchy corn snack, the Umaibo, with the first-ever price rise in the product's history.

A price hike of 20%, from ¥12 to ¥10, is the first in four decades of the 'delicious stick', and is blamed on the rising price of raw ingredients, especially corn from the US, according to the snack’s manufacturer Yaokin.

The snack is still cheap, however, and a relatively small price hike won’t stop schoolchildren from taking their Umaibo to school in their lunch boxes, but the rise is considered significant in Japan, where manufacturers are traditionally reluctant to pass cost inflation onto the consumer.

The rise is indicative of how inflation is disproportionately affecting low-cost items, and therefore the most vulnerable people in society. In general, the lowest cost items are the first and the most severely to be hit with price hikes on the supermarket shelves, adding large amounts to overall bills.

The Umaibo stick comes in 12 different flavours, all based on Japanese dishes such as spicy cod roe and takoyaki octopus balls, with cream of corn soup the biggest seller. They are hugely popular and sell up to 700 million pieces per year.